The present invention relates to the field of network communication. More specifically, it relates to policy enforcement on data packets in a computer network.
Increasing deployment of application servers by Application Service Providers (ASPs) has created a strong need for mechanisms through which the ASPs are able to offer guaranteed application performance over the Internet to their customers. However, current network architectures lack tools that can enable ASPs to control the usage of the application server and guarantee response time from their application servers to their customers. This has impacted them adversely in terms of customer confidence in their ability to meet performance requirements. What is therefore needed is a device that can enable the ASPs to offer SLAs (Service Level Agreements) on application performance.
In the past, application bandwidth control devices have been developed for IP networks. Examples are the “Packeteer box” and the “Allot Communications” box. These devices typically sit at the edge of enterprise/ASP network and the Internet and control the bandwidth of the link that is available to application traffic from defined source/destination etc. However, none are known to be able to control the number of simultaneous transactions of the application and the response time of application. Also they are limited in their capability to look deep into the IP packets in terms of transactions and associated parameters of applications and differentiate the priority accorded on this basis. Their scaling capabilities are also limited in terms of the speed of the link, the number of policies they can enforce and the number of simultaneous connections/sessions they can handle.